


Much in Vows, Little in Love

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Series: To Die as Lovers May [10]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Cisswap, Depression, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Graphic Sex, Lestat No, Past Abuse, Pretentious Reference in Title, Rule 63, Sex Toys, Transmasculine Character, as usual, honey why, that is not how you fix a romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 14:51:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9766664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: Lestat pays a visit to the woman who has held her heart in thrall for two centuries, determined to reclaim Louisa by all means possible. Worship; wooing.Louisa, though, has little interest in being forgiven for her trespasses, and less seeming awareness of her own worth. To go forward, Lestat tries to go back--And it all goes so well, at first. As usual.





	

**New Orleans, 1991**

In a strange moment out of time, Lestat had come to live out what she and Armida had circled around for centuries. Lestat kissed her old rival, loved her, held her and hurt her and was hurt in return, and it was good. But she couldn't get the images of their fledglings' exquisite congress out of her head, and in truth she did not try.

Armida would see, whether or not she tried to bury it--Armida knew and condoned what she did. So Lestat pushed away guilt at the times her strange little lover lay in her arms on the couch, film playing on the television, and Lestat's thoughts… wandered.

And in time, her feet wandered, too, down to the house at the end of that old dead-end street.

She loved where she loved, and she could not deny it.

The place was not shared this time, at least, but Louisa answered the door with a perturbed look on her lovely face.

"Lestat. I didn't--" Her right hand twitched on the doorjamb, a strange reluctant tremor, as her left raked back through her hair. "It's not your night. I'm sorry, if I'd known..."

"Don't tell me you've gotten a red carpet to roll out in my honor." She was hardly dressed for it, with her high boots and designer jeans and shockingly (carefully) ripped shirt. She was made up for a different audience, even if she'd left them behind. "I'm sure your moths would eat it away, anyhow. I'll have to make do." She started to make her way in, but was stopped by Louisa's arm.

"Wait. I'm not--I'm not dressed." her hand went to her ear again, and Lestat realized she didn't remember how long it had been since she'd seen her love with long hair.

She tried to recover. "You say these things to tempt me, even when they're clearly untrue." She reached out and tugged at the hem of Louisa's sweater. "Though I could make it true if you liked." She leaned against the door frame, putting on her most wolfish grin and growl. "Won't you let me in, little girl?"

"Don't tease," Louisa snapped, hard enough to push Lestat out of the act. "I know that you hate these things. And I've tried--"

"Hate?" she blinked, baffled. "Beloved, any look of yours is one I adore, for it means I'm able to look upon you." She gave a little flourish with her hand, Shakespearean-like. If Louisa could be foolish, she could be grand.

"Look all you like, once I'm--to your taste. It will only take a moment." Her eyes darted about as a creature hunted, hand smoothing the cheap fabric of her skirt.

"Louisa," Lestat captured one of those flitting hands, like a white dove, and kissed it.

The fingertips were roughened and fragrant with blood, sure sign of some petty handwork left abandoned. "Beloved, you are perfectly beautiful no matter what. Can we not just...talk?"

It sounded ridiculous, put that way, and Louisa's face said as much.

They never talked when they could argue, after all. And between that, there was sensuality and the breaths waiting for the next encounter. No wonder she'd let Danny in, with her notebooks and tolerance for philosophical tail-chasing. But Louisa so rarely challenged her now, except to fold herself away in sad, guilty resignation.

"You know tact isn't my forte." The twitch of Louisa's lip was as good as a full snort. "Tell me what has you in this frenzy."

"I'd thought you beyond testing me." Louisa sighed, the sound carrying a century of weight. "Why do you pretend you don't hate seeing me clothed as a woman?"

"I....what?" She'd never understand her. "Of course you're a woman. You're playing the part to a tee right now with this nonsense."

"If it's nonsense, let me fix it for you." She was growing agitated, tugging against Lestat's hold.

"No! I don't -- I want you to be happy." (Another lie--she'd wanted Louisa at her side, even when she was a monster). "I never asked for this!"

"You don't remember." Louisa put her free hand to her face, chuckling. "Of course you don't."

"Remember _what_!? How you talk in ridd--" The moonlight glinted from Louisa's second-to-smallest finger, and Lestat stuttered. "You're wearing the ring."

"What? Oh!" Her lovely eyes were wide with apprehension as she snatched her hand behind her back.

"Show me," Lestat said, leaning in the door she'd entered uninvited so many times.

"Never mind that! I'll take it off, I promise, and you'll have me as you like."

"But--" _But I like you wearing my ring_ , she wanted to say. But Louisa flinched from her, when usually she was so--accommodating. Lestat took a long breath through her nose. "Louisa, why are you so desperate to change? What's wrong with your clothes?"

"It's not a Monday or a Tuesday," Louisa said, stepping back towards an old trunk with a broken latch. "If it were, I would have known to wear slacks and to cut my hair. And to put on the--other things."

"But you look lovely."

"I don't want you angry!" she snapped with a flash of all that banked fire Lestat had never been able to predict. And just as quickly, it guttered out. "I--I'm sorry." (Apologies, apologies, always when they made the least sense--) "You made your preferences clear, and I-- _I_ prefer the experience when I match them. Please, just allow it before we begin."

"The experi--I don't understand you!" She never had, maybe. She followed Louisa in, took her by the shoulders to hold her steady. "Tell me what's going on!"

Louisa went still in her grasp, flowing and impossible as water. "It's no matter now. You're already angry." Her eyes had gone dull. "I may as well ask you not to make it hurt, for all the good it will do."

Hurt. The word knocked the wind out of her, puncturing through even her preening ego. "I hurt you?" Fool question. Hadn't she read the pain in Louisa's bitter little memoir? She'd been a fool to think things had changed.

"It's been better, lately. I've remembered." A bitter huff accompanied the last word. "I suppose that's done with now."

"No! I--" She sank to her knees, pressed Louisa's hand to her forehead. "I wanted it to be right. I know I'm impossible. Lilith herself, more wicked than the Devil. But I never," of all the times to lose her words.

"Don't, Lestat. You don't have to play these games with me." Louisa pulled her hand back, and there was something deliberate in the way she rolled back her shoulders and did _not_ wrap arms about herself. "I'm not so proud as I once was, after all."

They could begin like this. Lestat could be content to remain this way, to grasp full hips and round, soft breasts from below. To worship at that beautiful, violated temple.

"When were you ever proud?" she asked instead, too seriously. "When did you ever hold yourself in sufficient regard?"

"I've nothing left to recommend me," Louisa murmured as though she were alone. She stepped back and sank to the cushions of the old couch on which Lestat had seen her making love to another. Getting the loving that should have come from the one who'd given her a ring. "Just don't leave me alone."

A memory touched the edge of Lestat's consciousness, but the jealousy was greater.

"Seems it's not much of a concern any longer," she said waspishly. "Your other caller would no doubt be happy to fill the time."

"What?" So _innocent_ , her tiny quirk of flawless brows.

"Your  beloved interviewer. Armida's own. Why, she'd take my place in an instant."

Louisa stilled again, going dead for long moments as usually only the oldest of them would, eyes staring blankly and mouth just slightly parted. And then she spoke.

"Is she dead yet, or are you... asking for something?"

She wanted to scream, but there was no one to blame but herself. She was the monster, the walking reputation who _would_ kill a rival as easy as breathing. And she wanted to. oh, deep down in her bones, as much as she'd wanted anything. But that would only drive Louisa further from her. "If she's gotten herself killed it's her own affair. I had no hand in it," she huffed. "I suppose you'd show more in the vein of relief if it were me."

(Even as she laid the hook she thought about the nights alone in her coffin, the desperate desire to walk out into the desert and accept defeat. To see if the thing that her body had become would ever release her, or if even that choice was lost to her now. But if she did, she'd never tell Louisa).

"You're fishing. Have you come to have me stroke your ego? You know I'm a poorer candidate than your adoring fans."

"God DAMMIT!" Lestat brought her hand down against the wood, feeling pathetic even as it splintered against and into her fist. "If you want me gone just say so!" She'd fought so hard to preserve this, but every night was a war through thorny walls with the briefest reprieve on the other side, before it all began anew.

"I've never wanted you gone. Not once; you said so yourself, when you wrote of my begging neediness." Her lips quirked. "Of all the things to tell the truth about."

"Just what *did* you want, then?”

"I wanted you to _stay_. And to be--gentler. Better than other things." She colored, a faint watercolor wash of pink on her cheeks and nose. "When you met your... companion... you finally told me what you wanted. I'm no good at it, but I've nothing else to give. Not my money, nor my mind, and you never liked my looks. Never, but when--" Her voice went higher, rougher, until it momentarily choked itself on the stream of words. And she sat so determined, square-shouldered and square-jawed, so unlike the way she'd been but still beautiful. "I wanted impossible things, stupid girl that I am.”

"Your looks. I've dedicated whole _odes_ to your looks. Did you read the book at all?" She crawled closer, beholden to the one person who could render her subservient. "I adore your looks. Your lovely bright eyes, like beacons in this endless night. Your silken hair. Your plush lips." She traced Louisa's face as she went, soft and reverent as she could be. "The grace I could never possess. I was a fool that night, to think you might look like me." Oh, she remembered, even if it hadn't made that damnable novel. She hadn't thought much of it, beyond the wonder of being so close. So close, and yet in all those years, they'd never...

Their faces were close enough to touch, and yet she held herself back. "Tell me what it was you wanted. Let me give it to you now."

Louisa's gaze tried to retreat again, but there was nowhere to go. She cupped Lestat's face. "I'd hoped...I dreamed we might be close; that I might join with your body as well as your mind." The whisper of that alto tone sent a shiver of lust down Lestat's back.

"But we are made as we are." Distant again. "I've accepted it. If you had desired such a thing, you would have attempted it long ago."

It was Lestat's turn to flush, desperately floundering to hide her own ignorance. Danny had figured it out before her. _Danny_. the little near-mortal upstart. Anger at being bested simmered under her skin. Plans began to formulate behind her eyes.

"Louisa, my love," she grew formal. "I'm afraid I'll have to postpone this meeting. But I'll come again tomorrow, if you allow it."

"I will never refuse you," Louisa replied with the seriousness of a vow, head dipping low and face hidden by a curtain of hair. "And I'll try to be better...prepared...tomorrow."

Lestat would never change herself to please another--not since. Well.

She just wouldn't; to be womanly was to be _diminished_ , less than the full breadth of who and what she was. To be crammed into ladies' finery and constrained to ladies' manners would have scalded her to the bone. But it hadn't occurred to her that Louisa _would_ yield so, to her own detriment.

Lestat had spent her whole adolescence being needed by those who didn't care for her; being accommodated...

She shook her head and took a careful kiss, relishing the old, familiar feel of black silk tangling about her fingers.

"No, my beloved," she said as they broke apart. "Please, just be yourself. It would... appeal to me."

She felt a tiny tremor go through Louisa, quickly mastered; how frightening was it to bend?

"Until tomorrow," Louisa said instead, little non-answer as her gaze locked onto Lestat's retreating form.

***

Lestat believed first and foremost in dressing for occasions, choosing precisely what it would take to dazzle an onlooker above and beyond their expectations (whatever those might be). She spent the first hour after waking the next night practicing her walk as if she had always swaggered with such ease, feeling thrilled and out of sorts by turns at the chafe of the harness beneath her jeans and the weight against her leg.

She had spent her life and her death battering at the coffin of her sex and what is prescribed for her, and yet this particular brand of artifice had never appealed. It was always enough that she oozed grandeur; handsomeness. That in this new age she appealed as some transcendent god whose radiance obliterated any question of "what" she was as she filled the hearts (and other things) of her audiences.

But for Louisa...yes, she had longed to be a man, believing with her idiot's swagger that she might've laid some kind of claim, driven out the memory of all who came before.

Louisa hadn't needed her for that. And it had been enough to have her, for a while, and put away thoughts of what their bodies couldn't do, alive or dead.  

She still knocked, though it would've been her prerogative to burst in, swooping upon the woman who still wore her ring.

But she waited, smiling with calm she didn't feel at her strongest, dearest fledgling as she was looked up and down.

Though her expression was nervous, Louia wore her hair long down her back. "Am I meant to detect the grand change that necessitated you leaving so quickly?"

"Change comes from within, cherie," Lestat said with her most charming smile. "May I come in?"

"Of course." She seemed so confused by the question, stepping backwards out of the way to allow Lestat clear passage. Her little house had so few rooms, and fewer yet she actually used; the kitchen was home to a few dead plants, the bathroom likely where she cleaned herself of blood and  lay in the daylight hours in an old cast-iron tub or a trunk pushed up to the wall.

The room off to the side of the main one--that was where she kept a bed. It was large, with an iron frame and tables with candles and lamps surrounding it, and a window with drawn voile curtains that diffused the moonlight.

Lestat replaced the linens whenever they grew musty; she hated the thought of lying down on rotting velvet. (The memory.)

Once, she'd lived (or nearly so) with this woman, spent every night reading or listening to music or playing at Shakespeare for their lovely twisted son, bless his black little heart. She'd seen Louisa's handwork, finer than mortals ever could make, and she'd rested assured that the family's finances were cared for. She'd danced and kissed her in polite society and the worst gutters. And she'd taken her pleasure, yes, whenever and however she wanted it.

Now she watched Louisa, her truest dearest love, hurriedly stow a piece of knitting in a drawer with a half-rotten copy of _The Well of Loneliness_ and then wander back into that bedroom, back to Lestat and gait careless, contrast to the questions in her viridian eyes.

Lestat held her hand out, beckoning the mistress of the house who shrank so timidly in her own domain. "Will you dance with me?"

Louisa's head tilted to one side, perplexed. "We have no music." But she took the offered hand anyway, drawn into a slow waltz with all the stiff propriety of when they'd been alive.

"You forget the music of the night." She put on that thick, ridiculous accent and was rewarded with a slip of a smile. They stepped around one another, hesitant as they'd always been, hands meeting but bodies never.

"I never cared for these displays," she remarked, spinning Louisa away and then capturing her in an embrace from behind. "The modern mind has far more interesting ideas."

"Modern, hmm? Should we not have your rock music here, for something of that sort?" Louisa, the _lady_ , was skilled enough to move with the change in style, and... skilled... enough, too, to simply accept the change in direction.

Her head rolled back, muscles lax and hair fragrant, asking wordlessly for what Lestat had always given her.

"Oh, yes, beloved. Only the most romantic, though; something unpublished. Special."

Her music had always been devoted to the myth of their King, or the earlier times--never the love and desire she felt for this beautiful, hurt woman.

Instead of grasping her by the throat and feeding as invited, expected, Lestat took one hand up to the curve of Louisa’s ribcage, and the other down to grasp the roundness of her hip. And then, as she nuzzled at Louisa's delicate ear, she pressed up and forward with her pelvis.

And when the heavy stiffness she wore rubbed against Louisa's soft roundness, the shiver and gasp of shock alone was worth the absurdity of purchasing it, the squeeze of leather straps.

"You..." she hesitated, not quite sure of what to ask.

"Your devil's invention needn't be used to torment you." Not truly, beyond the joy of seeing that pretty face riled into frustration, the endearing wrinkle of her nose before she pinched it with a long suffering sigh.

But this was a night of worship. Lestat nipped at Louisa's ear, feeling the way her beloved's body melted in an unheard of way. "Tell me those wicked dreams of yours," she breathed, hot with the blood of killers and crooks.

"Are you; can you really--"

"Anything you want. But you must tell me." to hear such filth from Louisa's mouth was a reward in itself.

Louisa turned in her arms, a strange steadiness in her gaze, and she nuzzled into Lestat's neck. "Let me see you."

What she'd always wanted, asked for. Even now it sent an old fear prickling over Lestat's skin, and she had to banish it. She was stronger than that now. She reached up to pull her shirt over her head, moving by inches. Even if this were for Louisa, she could still add a little flair.

That rapt face vanished behind black cotton when Lestat pulled the shirt over her head, and though she'd seen it all before, still the sight of a red, wet mouth parted in awe, the sound of shaky breaths, was more comfort than she could ever have hoped for.

Her breasts were still crushed down somewhat by the elastic undergarment she'd chosen--but Louisa didn't seem disappointed, one graceful hand rising and then falling to her side like a once-wild falcon trapped by jesses.

"Oh." The white teeth clasping the lower lip--the constrained forward lean--Louisa had always desired Lestat, and never been shy about admitting it. "Oh, please--" She cut off when Lestat pulled her back in, letting out a little wordless cry when Lestat used her own hands on that selfsame body. So lovely.

Kissing was as familiar as the steps they danced around each other, Lestat traced circles down Louisa's back, almost able to feel skin through the thin material. "Tell me what you want of me," she said again, enjoying the vibration of her voice along Louisa's lower lip. A song that had captivated thousands, but had been meant for one.

"Undress me." Louisa moved with sureness, content to order when she'd been commanded, and placed Lestat's hands on her hips. "Hurry."

"These rags have never suited you." Lestat's fingers dug in and tore, leaving tatters on the dusty floorboards. "But even they can't dampen your beauty."

Louisa was bare beneath, spare and perfectly shaped - all the scars done to her, Lestat's among them, hidden beneath her skin. It was a joy to grasp her hips, her cheeks, to feel her respond and wrap her legs around Lestat's waist. All of it no more effort than a thought as she pressed her love against the wall, let Louisa's weight sink her down just far enough to rub against that firmness.

She'd not even removed her trousers, and yet Louisa trembled for her (not in fear, not this time--)

It should anger her, that this moaning lustful _want_ came when she did this thing. But Louisa hadn't asked for what she’d planned. Had never shown a desire for it, only for Lestat herself, and that thirst was unfulfilled.

 _Lestat_ was the one who had always wanted the triumph, the conquest, the claiming. And at this point, it was beyond too late. Not just because of Danny's show of skill; it had been too late before Lestat ever arrived. But if she could not stake a claim, she could at least be unforgettable. Unimaginable.

 _Good_ , enough to wipe some portion of pain from her beloved's mind. Body.

Soul, for all Louisa thought it lost long ago.

So she kissed, caressed, stroked and tasted. And when the smell of blood hung heavy in the air thought she'd never broken skin, she fell back with her love atop her, onto that unhallowed bed.

It had been a mockery all those years ago, when she'd labeled Louisa "Merciful Death." But now, staring up at that face stamped permanently with sorrow and haloed by the room's dim lamplight, it was all too easy to view her as some savior.

A long, delicate hand smoothed hair from Lestat's face, and Louisa's smile was so tender as to break her heart. "You are beautiful," she said in reverence, though her word had never suited Lestat. Handsome, alluring, irresistible in her magnetism - but never beautiful.

"At last your eyes have cleared," she joked, shying even now from the tenderness of it.

"I've always thought so." Still that smile, soft and understanding of some weakness only she could see. "From the moment you found me that night." She slid down Lestat's form, undoing her jeans and sliding them down her hips. The erection she uncovered seemed to give her pause, and as her hand ran curiously over the smooth dark surface Lestat felt a shudder spread through her.

"Mortals are endlessly inventive, aren't they?" She canted her hips, pushing against Louisa's hand with an exaggerated arch for effect.

Louisa woke as if from a sleep, meeting Lestat's eyes. "May I?" As if she needed to ask; she could've ordered Lestat to beg and the rockstar, now strongest of them all, would have done it. Instead she whimpered as Louisa straddled her again, slowing sliding down until the prosthetic was buried inside her.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Lestat asked, seeing strain on that pretty (so much more than pretty) face and feeling in memory what it was like to force such an invasion all at once. These modern plastics might be different, but--she felt the drag.

"Of course," Louisa panted, hands on Lestat's shoulders and elbows locked.

"Cherie," she reached out almost timidly (SHE, the fiercest, fieriest being alive or dead), "Cherie, stop."

Louisa froze, and Lestat's very belly ached at the tension; she pressed a hand low over the pelvis, fingers spread between navel and crisp dark hair.

"Love, you're too dry. You can't--" she shifted, just a little, drove up only to make her point, and the answering pressure was incredible. "You musn't hurt yourself."

"It's meant to--"

"No." Lestat wanted to kiss, to trap that tongue with her own and thus escape discussion, but she could not, like this. "No, Louisa, come up and then very slowly down again. Let me help."

And when she snuck a thumb lower, Louisa shivered and obeyed.

The plastic was wet with blood, their cursed biology making it impossible to tell what was damage and what was arousal. A pretty metaphor, were it not at the expense of one she loved.

"Like that," she encouraged. "Just a little." She maneuvered her hips as best she could, rubbing the bloody head against Louisa's opening, and up further toward her clit. "Slowly."

She felt Louisa's thighs shake under her hands,  heard little gasps of pain become a repressed moan of frustration as Lestat worked her open, her fingers stealing in to stroke and tease and refusing to allow her to go further.

"Lestat," Louisa complained, her trembling now wholly visible. "Surely that--"

"Are you sure?" She could see a trickle of blood beading down Louisa's thigh, and she grinned. "You know we can stop if you wish."

"I--I wish--oh, please--"

"Say the words." Lestat felt less ridiculous than she'd imagined with this phallus strapped to her; the hitching breaths, the wet on her fingers as she guided the thing in a tease, dipping it to kiss Louisa's entrance and then slipping it away again, it all made her feel powerful as she never had when driving her wife mad with pain. She fisted the thing, vulgar and pointless except as a signal: _I want you. I want to put this in you. You make me feel this way._

And the sound Louisa made was like air escaping a teakettle while her hips bucked against Lestat's irresistible, protective strength.

"Please, please, Lestat."

"Talk, dearest."

" _Fuck me!_ " The words exploded, shocking, from her lady's mouth, and didn't she first find this rose in the gutter? Wasn't this very thing what had attracted her? She felt her own wetness seep as she positioned the thing, now slick with blood, and powered back in.

"As you ask, my love. Whatever you need."

As if the very act of rejoining was too much, Louisa shuddered and slumped against her, kissing her face and neck with a sweetness at odds with the supposed filth (so they said, whoever "they" were) of what they were doing.

"You have," it was impossible that she felt such an ache, when she wasn't truly connected to the thing making her beloved writhe so. Yet she was certain she'd die her second death if they didn't continue. "You have to move." To damn yourself, as Lestat had always demanded.

Louisa squirmed, trying to jerk her hips. Frustration crossed her features. "I don't know what to..." Shame was gone from her, or was going, and it left something too beautiful to comprehend.

"It's all right. Hush, it's--here. Get up, just for a moment." It was so easy to be kind, holding this power to do good. She guided Louisa beneath her; married and missionary, it should've been too dull for words. But Louisa's arms were around her neck, pulling her close, whispering in her ear as she began making slow, tentative thrusts.

She remembered still how she'd luxuriated in the memory of that long-dead cad, reliving again and again what he'd felt fucking the most beautiful disaster in the world while she swallowed her own pain. But this--she used her knees, her thighs, to drive home, hands tilting her love's pelvis with gentle, firm squeezes of buttocks. And Louisa loved it, every stroke, bloodying the sheets like a proper marriage bed though they'd been ruining one another for 200 years already. She moaned and arched, pushing her breasts up into the air in a wordless plea for Lestat to bend her mouth and taste them.

If her fangs slipped, Louisa seemed not to mind, relaxing into the most delicious of swoons as Lestat nursed at her nipple and kept a steady rhythm with her hips.

Like dancing, or music, tempo and coordination were all.

And Louisa's trembling hand rose, tugging a little at the bottom edge of the sports bra Lestat wore.

It was such a gentle touch, and still Lestat felt old aggression dog her. The urge to lash out only barely stayed behind her teeth, and Louisa felt it - her hand quickly darted away, and Lestat had to work to catch it again.

It was too soon, somehow, to admit that ugliness herself, but she guided Louisa's hand under the spandex, surprised by how _good_ it felt to allow this touch from this one woman. Even as Louisa grew bolder, and the meager little covering was rucked up over her breasts as Louisa sought better access, the fear didn't reappear.

"Beautiful," Louisa said again, kissing the pale buds of Lestat's nipples,  disrupting her own swoon for the mere chance to marvel. And there was Louisa's charm, at her heart -- even in her woeful mourning for all the world, there was nothing in it that wasn't captivating to her.

"You would say so," Lestat tried to smirk, but it wasn't enough to hide the tremor in her voice from either of them, the way Louisa began to lavish her with the gentlest caresses.

And then, the creak of the door, so perfectly timed as always that Lestat wondered if she wasn't under some curse.

"What the fuck--"

She was still fucking her spread, naked, weeping (just a little, just at the pleasure, please please love it darling mournful girl--), perfect wife, still clutching that dark head to her breast with bloody hands, when the shouting started, followed instantly by the crash of a hatrack across her shoulders.

"Get the fuck _off_ her, you crazy bitch!" All the strength of a gnat next to Lestat's power, but the surprise was enough to knock her to the side, enough to send Louisa's teeth to slice embarrassing parallel stripes in her flesh. Stinging, pleasant, even as she rolled to make herself a shelter for the weaker one beneath.

Her arms and legs were an implacable cage against the violence outside, and she banished any thought of comparison in favor of a disoriented, wordless snarl.

(And still the thing did its work, shifting within the softest wettest flesh and sparking cries--)

"Enough!" She darted out against the next blow, catching their assailant's arm and twisting hard enough that mortal bones would have broken. As it was, she was only able to bring her prey to their knees, giving her time before the potential kill.

Armida's fledgling was looking up at her from the edge of the bed with fangs bared, wild eyes making it clear that the next attack was only an opportunity away.

"You're _interrupting_ ," Lestat snarled. "Tell me why your rudeness shouldn't cost you a limb."

"You'll have to work for it," Danny shot back. "Figured you'd be safe, huh? Come by and have your little fun? Figured she wouldn't fight back, you sick fuck?"

It was such perfect misapprehension, a hero's story, that Lestat burst out laughing; her captive struggled anew. "And what are you going to do about it, little girl?" She grinned, unable to resist the chance to play the wicked villain.

"Lestat." Louisa's hand grasped her arm. "Don't tease her."

A _request_ , bold beyond measure coming from her trampled beauty, and it made Lestat turn her head and Danielle struggle all the harder, kicking and flapping.

"Sweetheart--Louisa, it's okay. You'll be okay, just hang on--" Little chewed-down nails, not even any good for clawing at Lestat's grip, and wild violet eyes only for the bloody creature kneeling on the bed.

"Danny," (the diminutive sounded terrifically intimate; the gentle reaching hand on another's shoulder stung Lestat's flesh with it's absence) "Danny, relax. She wasn't hurting me."

"You're lying." Images, tangled and undirected, of a life lived hard filled the air, and yes, Lestat wouldn't have believed it either. "You need to get help."

"Danielle." Lestat shook her, forced a meeting of their gazes; Danny's was glazed with fear but resolute, and for a moment Lestat wondered how many wolves this lanky, vulgar blonde girl would have fought. "Leave off. I was making love to my wife. Your cuckoldry can wait for another night."

"It's her night," Louisa whispered, shifting to cover her breasts with her knees and locking her arms about them as though that would conceal her allure. "I should have paid better attention."

The two would-be suitors glared at each other, each gaze filled with accusation -- _see, you've made her upset_.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Danny spoke first. "It's not your fault."

"I agree. Things were going just fine before this harridan interrupted," Lestat sniffed.

"’Fine.’ How stupid are you? She hates--"

"I can speak for myself." Louisa's voice was whispers over grass, but it stilled them both. "I'm sorry, Danny. I didn't mean to upset you. There are...certain things Lestat understands better than anyone else. Because she killed me."

It was another chance to gloat, but Lestat caught her love's eye instead. "Is that why you wanted it? Because of him?"

"To erase him." It was all but a miracle to hear such words, when Louisa held her grief closer than any lover. "Or...to erase that memory, and leave what I loved."

"What," Danny blinked, uncomprehending. "I don't--is this about that night Lestat found you?"

"Before." Louisa averted her gaze, that unfair mortal shame still clinging, and Lestat longed to reach out somehow and bridge that hideous gap.

"'Read between the lines,'" she said instead, quoting herself as she cautiously released Danny's arms.

She needed her own hands to grab a pillow and awkwardly cover the absurdity attached to her front and quickly going sticky with drying blood.

(Blood, blood on Louisa's thighs, revelation of the worst horror Lestat had ever failed to imagine. Disgust so immediate and palpable that it drove her back and away from comforting her new shiny girl, so much more hurt than she'd imagined in her little mental passion play. Rage at the rift so created, burning for decades of missed chances.)

"What goddamn _lines_? Do you people always speak in code?" Danny half-crawled onto the bed, boots and all, to touch Louisa's pure defiled flesh, and she was tender even in her fury.

"Paul." The name unspoken for so long, barely a name at all now. An unfamiliar syllable ripe with portent. "She's--we're talking about Paul."

"Paul. Your brother." Danny said it and paused, confirmatory, clearly wracking her memory for clues. "You were upset that he fell."

"For some reason," Lestat couldn't help adding. She'd never understood--as much as her temper waxed and waned, her feelings were never so fraught. She loved who she loved, and hated those who had wronged her ( _but that isn't true at all, is it_ , some nasty voice whispered inside her; and she thought of Armida, sleeping in her bed and staring at her with eyes that never lost their shock).

"He didn't mean..." even Louisa couldn't finish the lie, drawing in further on himself.

"You didn't kill him," Danny tried to reassure her, not knowing what she said. "It was an accident."

"Yes, I did." Haunted eyes, even now at the top of that staircase.

"You had to," Lestat countered. She'd have dashed his brains out herself, but to let gravity do it was insidious genius. "That perverse little bastard. No different from any of those holy types."

"I should have stopped him. Helped him. He was obsessed, and I argued with him. I said..."

"No. You said no." No excuses would tear away that truth.

Lestat saw something like recognition flicker in Danny's eyes, saw the flinch before it came. She snatched Danny's arm again to keep her from moving away. She'd already hurt Louisa so badly. The woman couldn't bear another rejection of this truth.

"I should have found a way. I--I tempted him--"

"You tempt no one, dearest. You have no such malice." Such lies her love had been fed, spoonfuls of poisoned honey to soothe and quiet a throat raw from screaming. "You're just a beauty."

Sitting was awkward, with the damned insistent dildo and Danny's looming rage, but she managed it.

"I tempted Danny." Such hollowness in the face, behind the eyes. Danny finally moved, snaking her long limbs around Lestat's wife as though she weren't smeared with the blood of another's lovemaking.

"That wasn't temptation. It's just--" her voice shook, eyes darting to Lestat, but the little slut was brave. "It's just love. I love you, sweetheart."

She was pale, though, even while her she  clutched Louisa's cheek to her own.

"An inevitable hazard of knowing you, my dearest martyr." Lestat took her hand, thumb rubbing that simple gold band. "But it is in your hands who you choose. That beast took advantage of your soft heart."

"It wasn't your fault," Danny added on, parroting the words Lestat had seen spread like sacred text between the women of this new century.

"Loathe though I am to agree with this upstart, in this she's right." No more than Lestat had been at fault as she was spirited from her bed, as she--

Lestat felt eyes on her, and she caught Danny dropping her gaze as she whipped her head around. "There's nerve, and then there's stupidity," she said, grinning acid. "If you had any sense, you'd leave us--"

"No more fighting." Louisa's voice stilled them. "I'll not spend my nights soothing your petty ego." She sounded impossibly exhausted, as if she could see every such night spread before her.

"Well then, what _will_ you spend your nights doing, my faithless beauty?" Venom, venom she'd resisted directing here, despite the pain--the betrayal. But she'd never been skilled at control anyway.

Louisa's frame went lax, and she uncurled to lie back on the bed, knees still bent and arms above her head. Contorted; belly flattened and moving with each shallow unnecessary breath. "I'll do what I'm good for," she said softly. "What gives me value, to all of you who touch me. Just--come on different nights, and we'll have no troubles with this false territoriality."

"What makes you think it's false? Why wouldn't I deserve to be territorial about my _wife's_ behavior?"

"Why do you keep calling her that?" Danny was a pretty, fierce little thing, and her hands hovered near Louisa's body without touching. As though Louisa were--tainted. Contaminated.

 _Sinful_.

Lestat had never seen it from outside before, the way that recoil could harm.

 _"Why didn't you help me?"_ Louisa had asked once, far away on the blackest of nights.

She'd had no answer but her own wounded pride, lashing out with the terrified rage that never really covered her shame. She made a point of taking Louisa's hand now, as if that could undo the centuries of hurt. "I believe that is the correct term, when a woman wears your ring." Still there, still treasured, when Louisa had thrown away everything she didn't burn.

"Please. You just wanted to get around without causing a scandal. Louisa told me all about it," Danny scoffed, her eyes locked on those joined hands.

"I have always been known for my fear of scandal. It's a curse of my demure nature." And she was doing it again, wasn't she. Making her love a spectacle, an object. "Hell and damnation, love. You know your mind is a mystery to me. Is it so much to ask you to tell me what you want?" She'd been doing it so beautifully before, the two of them frightfully close to honesty. She remembered her own nudity, the bra shoved up against her shoulders in denial of two hundred years of careful concealment, and only her pride kept her from covering herself.

"I _want_ what I can _get,_ husband!" The anger or the word; Lestat wasn't sure which stung more. Anger had always been a slow boil in her strange love. "What you will grant me, now that I've sunk to my natural level."

"Sweetheart--" and now Danny was clenching her bony fists and hiding them in her lap, trying in vain to get Louisa to look her in the eye. "Sweetheart, do you want me to go? So you can be alone with your..." she licked her lips, face softly rageful. "With Lestat?"

Hope, mean-spirited, pricked Lestat's chest.

"No." Louisa was blunt only at the worst times, which were also the best. "No, I--I don't want to be alone at all. I never did."

"Okay." Danny touched the hair as though it was the only safe part. "Okay, then do you want me to go dig up the floor? It's getting early for you."

"No, don't go. I want to finish," a little, sordid emphasis on the word, unacknowledged, "what we started."

"Of course." For Louisa, they could both speak in tandem, but unease set back in almost immediately.

If this soured, it would be the end of their fragile but inevitable communion for years. Even Lestat's pride couldn't withstand that blow. And she'd had enough of being set on fire.

"I know your skill is in voyeurism, but perhaps you'd consider contributing this once," Lestat arched her eyebrow, straightening her back this once.

Danny's nose wrinkled. "You want me to--"

"For Louisa." What else could put them in the same room, both the reason they fought and the only reason they restrained themselves from going for each other's throats.

The blood she'd worked so hard to rouse had dried, leaving the dildo browned and sticky and Louisa unprepared.

"You could put that mouth to better use." Lestat had had her offers from aspiring producers, thought with delight about the shock it would cause, until she'd realized the _kind_ of subject they'd wanted to make of her, doe-eyed and fragile and submitting. Not all of them had deserved death, but she'd given it anyway, given the sad news to their blonde and sharp eyed assistants with a wink. But still. She remembered the lines.

"Get a grip." Danny was well into her righteous indignation, not aware of what she risked.

"I thought you wanted dear Louisa's blood. More than your own life." She dragged her finger down the shaft, sinking into the preposterousness of the situation. Savoring the power of her position. "No doubt our darling needs help in reinvigorating her passions. So earn it." How it cost her to admit that shared importance from this little upstart. The least she could do was know her place. Bend her neck, metaphorically and literally.

Danny went rigid, lips white from the pressure with which she clamped them together, and Louisa's eyes widened. The young one reached out halfheartedly, like the effort cost her something dear despite the preciousness of what she had permission to touch.

But then Louisa caught Danny's wrist and cheek.

"No," she whispered. "Don't hurt yourself that way."

"I've done worse," Danny replied, looking only at Louisa as though she could wish Lestat out of existence thereby.

"That doesn't mean you need do this. You aren't a mere spectacle."

And out of all of them, it was _Danny_ , snappy modern Danny on the verge of getting her fondest wish, who trembled.

"Would someone mind elaborating, for the sake of your pitiful and forgotten audience?" Lestat said pettily, sliding a hand up Louisa's naked leg and Danny's denim-clad one just because she could. Just so as not to be ignored.

"What, you're not gonna look in my head? Isn't that novel." She was still fixed on Louisa, the whole of her pathetic little world.

"You go too far." Calm, sad Louisa, capable of acting for others but never herself. "If you make her party to such acts, it would be no better than if I stripped you bare in sight of everyone." And gently, she grasped the hem of Lestat's top and pulled it down.

It was a low, sharp blade, the kind only her beloved could wield. She felt filthy in that moment, poisonous and corrosive as she hadn't since, since --

_But Nicki had asked her to do it._

"Make yourself useful, then. I'm sure you know what to do." Lestat snatched her hands back as if in disgust, sliding out of the bed to the small adjoining bathroom to clean away the drying blood. She could see Danny falling to her knees, crawling on her belly in adoring fealty. And she was no better, was she? Stripped of her pride by someone who was meant to complement her utterly.

(Meant to be the shade to her sun; the receptive cool space heated by Lestat's fiery passion. Louisa should be moved _by_ Lestat.)

The pipes shuddered and rattled before finally yielding fort water at first tinged red with rust. It ran the same color when she worked the dildo free with difficulty and immersed it. The water was cold; no electricity to power a heater.

There was no trunk, no coffin. No sign that Louisa lay here.

Lestat's woman had kept their family flush with luxury for nearly a century, and now she lived in _this_.

Now she gave those tiny cries Lestat tried not to hear through the crumbling plaster, searching in vain for some way to dry the thing that had finally given Louisa some small measure of enjoyment at Lestat's...hands.

She found nothing, and the slick unrealistic surface was still beaded with water droplets when she admitted defeat and turned back to the open door.

They weren't doing what she'd expected. It wasn't some mere act of service. Louisa was curled against Danny, kissing  and shivering, hands at meager still-covered breasts showing an appreciation made more clear only by the rhythmic rolling of her hips against Danny's lap.

One of Danny's hands worked, making wet filthy sounds.

Not even a quarter of a century, a fraction of the time Louisa had been hers, and already Danny had her in thrall, could give her joy when Lestat had always accepted her resignation. She felt absurd with the wet, dark _thing_ in her hands, robbed of all its potency now that she stood at the outside.

Part of her wanted to retreat in a sulk, force them to seek her out and beg to know how they'd wronged her. But they wouldn't. Danny would claim a victory, and Louisa would wait, frozen in time, uncaring of whether Lestat came again or not.

"Are you quite finished?" She crawled onto the bed without waiting for an answer, pressed against Louisa's back while Danny was still folded beneath her. She held the toy in her hand, unwilling to show off the pretense of affixing it before her rival's critical eyes.

"She hasn't come, if that's what you mean." Danny's face was sour, her face reluctantly pried from its place at Louisa's breast.

"It's not." She pulled Danny's hand free, appraising the blood on her fingers and the small convulsion Louisa made at the loss. It was her place, her _right_ , to deliver this.

She worked the dildo with her hands now, rougher than she'd been before, her arm around Louisa's belly to pull her close and force her to feel every pointed thrust. To feel _something_.

And yes, Louisa clearly felt. She went stiff and limp in turns, one hand tugging painfully at Lestat's hair and the other arm outstretched, grasping, stretching--Danny caught and kissed it, and then reached down to interlace her fingers with Lestat's, a tender touch alchemized into guidance or a command.

Danny's rare violet eyes squeezed shut, charcoal lashes pressed to her milky cheeks, and a vertical line appeared between her brows. She looked pained with her lips an inch from Lestat's own, still pink with the memory of life, and Lestat kissed her as Louisa's mouth opened again in a sweet heartbreaking scream.

They caught her between them as she fell, spent and sleepy and already curling against the sheets - content, it seemed, that they would toss her aside. The aftermath of that single kiss lingered on Lestat's lips as she watched Danny retreat, the faithful watchdog abandoning her post. And, ever the curious cat, she followed after, pressing a kiss to Louisa's hair before she left.

Danny had made a warzone of the moldering sitting room, a patch of floorboards torn aside and dirt flung up with each of Danny's almost hysterical movements.

All the ancients wondered what made Louisa special, why she'd never gone to ground like the rest of them. Here, it seemed was the answer: the earth was already her most intimate friend. It fit her mourner's aesthetic, Lestat supposed. Dead even as she walked.

"What are you doing out here?" Danny stole her line.

"I could ask you the same." She sat at the edge of the grave, lounging with superiority she didn't feel.

"She shouldn't be alone. Not after whatever the fuck that was." Danny was biting her lip, trembling again (or maybe she'd never stopped). "I've never seen anything that fucking sad in my entire life."

"You're young yet," Lestat said roughly, throat clogged.

"Fuck you, bitch." Danny's voice went weary. Lestat could rip her in two just for the insult, were she not dear to Armida.

To Louisa.

(For whatever reason, vulgar, thin, unwomanly thing--)

"I've seen shit that didn't even exist when you were alive," Danny continued. "And I've seen the same old shit that always was. But Louisa--" her voice shook along with her body, even as she braced hands on knees.

"Louisa is _perfect_ ," Lestat snapped, stung by proxy.

"Of COURSE she is!" The thunder was quieted to a hiss in respect to their near-slumbering beauty. "Of--but she--" Danny shook her head. "I'm. I'm going out tomorrow. Tell her whatever the fuck you want when she wakes up, so long as it doesn't hurt her. But I have to--"

The way she gnawed her forefinger was explanation enough.

"Giving up and embracing the sun already?" Lestat drawled.

"You're not getting rid of me that easy." Danny pulled herself out of the grave, dirty and damnably proud. "Not sure where you're sleeping. Louisa doesn't keep a coffin. I'm sure you're too good to lay down in the dirt with the rest of us."

Lestat smirked. "Paint me as your villain if it soothes you." It's what Louisa had done. "Just so long as you remember I won."

"That's all she is, right? A prize? Proof that you're the most irresistible, that you can turn her into _that_ and then just waltz back in and have her forgive you?"

"You think I-"

"Who the fuck else?"

Who else indeed?

"Armida," Lestat said, tasting the lie. And sure enough, Danny's lip curled at the mention of that shared beloved.

"Armida's fucked in the head, I know, but she couldn't do _that_ ," Danny said with childish confidence. "She's not--she would've treasured her." Her voice dropped on the last two words.

"Would she?" Lestat countered, looking Danny up and down. Thirty-two, and she would have died outright from Armida's unbearable and overwhelming love.

"Yes."

Lestat shrugged. "Louisa wasn't like that when..." _When we were married_ ,  she couldn’t  say, though she'd been claiming that right all evening. "When." _When we met_ , in a dark alley with a man's filthy cock making her weep at her own request.

She looked away with a sound of frustration.

"She wasn't when I met her either," Danny's rough voice said with a thickening of withheld tears. "Or maybe she was. Those tapes--the fucking things are so--I had to edit the Hell out of them because she was too...I thought _modest_."

"'Modest.' A real, proper lady," Lestat repeated. Two sides of a cipher, put together to reveal an expanse of nothing. Look at the pair of them, broken to pieces over the cracking of their idols. "It seems her sainted brother pulled her down when he fell after all." Her spirit broke while his head was spattered on the stair.

"Bullshit. One person can't...not for that many years." She looked unconvinced of her own lie.

"You were prepared to lay that same charge on me. Wounded that she kept things from you?" Weren't they all.  

"I can't believe she didn't...christ, that son of a bitch."

"Quite." Lestat had been forbidden from laying a hand on Louisa's family, and so she'd turned her sights on the Freniere boy and his leering eyes. The satisfaction of it had been pale, even for the brief moment it caused Louisa to look at her.

"If she's worse now," Danny said suddenly, swaying slightly with manufactured exhaustion. "It's because you came back. That's what changed. That's why she lives like this, to spite _you_."

It was a lovely thought, that Louisa's world might revolve around her so completely. But false nonetheless. "And Paris and all the rest, all for me. How romantic. But untrue. Ask your maker. I know where you can find her." Lestat had left her sleeping in her bed, after all.

Danny flinched, not chastened but wounded by the suggestion. Strange images flickered through Lestat's head before they cut off again. "I can't. She won't--she made me do things, and I can't be alright with that now."

So many times Lestat had 'made' her love do things, and Louisa had always been alright with it, after the tears or the shouting. After Lestat won and had her way.

Perhaps she'd been a husband and father after all; her mother certainly wouldn't have approved. Her mother _hadn't_ , growing cold and remote, struggling to feel anything through the protections her husband and sons forced her to erect. Lestat had hated her for that; for her distance, her beauty, her hoarded books and jewels. How her mother loved her fantasies of ruination, public and lewd and all to spite others, no pleasure inherent for herself.

Lestat had hated--

"...understand how she could feel _useless_. Stupid, for God's sake, she never wants to speak up when she's so smart, but..."

Droning, droning, little filthy usurper in over her fair head.

"If you're finished," an order, not a request. "You'd better start running before dawn finds you."

"You wouldn't." Danny baited even as she stepped back. "Louisa would never forgive you."

"Louisa forgave me for killing our son." She hadn't meant to, hadn't wanted that, but still the blood would never be off her hands and they both knew it. She took a menacing step forward. "There's far less of you to forget."

She wasn't sure herself if she'd do it, but the threat proved enough. Danny bolted away from her, still in her boots and ragged clothes, running from the Devil at her heels. Alone, finally. With her love insensate and indifferent to her presence. What a victory.

She returned to the bedroom with its high windows, its suicidal openness, and gathered Louisa to her chest. Slumbering, sweet Louisa, who hated and adored all of them. Who hid her true self so deeply not even their great mind reader could see to find it. Lestat carried her over the threshold into the living room, drifted down to the bottom of the grave using powers Louisa hated and feared.

She felt alone, naked and dirty, a monster crouched over its prize. Maria might've painted such a scene. She remembered her fantasy about walking into the sun, just to see if she could.

But not today. Not when she'd _won_ , this bitter victory that was increasingly hollow.

Yes, she'd taken her woman in long-delayed consummation; yes, Louisa had climaxed for her. Yes, she'd even shown Danny her insignificance and banished her.

But this--this was not the home or the woman or the life it should have been. It was _dark_ as she'd always hated, drab and impoverished as her childhood. Brutal as her young womanhood. She snuffed the candles with a thought and gathered her wife or mistress or victim in her arms. The soil was too thick about her to smell the fragrant black locks as she waited to die another day.


End file.
